My first go around, I couldn’t get past page 10. Likeable Characters/A Perfect Autumn in NYC Thriller Fans of literary thrillers will enjoy the novel's dark mood and clever form, even if the mystery doesn't entirely hold together. Amelia's first-person narration provides the most human note, as McCreight portrays the darkness of adolescence, complete with doomed love, bullies, poisonous friendship, and insecurity. The real story of Amelia's life and death emerges slowly, through a creative blend of Kate's present, Amelia's past, and such varied communication methods as texts, e-mails, blog entries, and Facebook status updates, leading to a chaotic landslide of climactic revelations that strains believability. Lewis Thompson, who involves her, to an implausible degree, as an equal in the investigation as they trawl through Amelia's online history and interview her classmates and their families. Kate's grief over Amelia's death and guilt about her failures as a mother are compounded by a series of anonymous text messages intimating that Amelia was actually murdered. But, most of all, it’s the story of how far a mother will go to vindicate the memory of a daughter whose life she couldn’t save.Īfter her teenage daughter Amelia's mysterious suicide, litigation attorney Kate Baron becomes an unlikely amateur sleuth in McCreight's diverting, if busy, debut. Reconstructing Amelia is about secret first loves, old friendships, and an all-girls club steeped in tradition. Until she gets an anonymous text: She didn’t jump. And clouded as she is by her guilt and grief, it is the one she forces herself to believe.

At least that’s the story Grace Hall tells Kate. And for Kate.Īn academic overachiever despondent over getting caught cheating has jumped to her death. By then it’s already too late for Amelia.

But Kate’s stress over leaving work quickly turns to panic when she arrives at the school and finds it surrounded by police officers, fire trucks, and an ambulance. Amelia has been suspended, effective immediately, and Kate must come get her daughter-now. Kate's in the middle of the biggest meeting of her career when she gets the telephone call from Grace Hall, her daughter’s exclusive private school in Park Slope, Brooklyn. The stunning debut novel from Kimberly McCreight in which a single mother reconstructs her teenaged daughter Amelia’s tragic death, sifting through her emails, texts, and social media to piece together the shocking truth about the last days of her life. And like Gone Girl, it should be hailed as one of the best books of the year.” - Entertainment Weekly “Like Gone Girl, Reconstructing Amelia seamlessly marries a crime story with a relationship drama.

Reconstruction amelia